Petroleum is a vital source of fuels for transportation, industrial chemicals that produce polymers, plastics, pharmaceuticals, paints and other important chemicals. Recently, technologies have emerged that indicate vast new resources of hydrocarbons that are being recovered by hydraulic fracturing. Currently liquid-rich raw natural gas is being flared in large quantities at numerous locations by oil producers. This activity entails massive loss of income. Furthermore, the large-scale flaring of natural gas has raised environmental issues that could cause state and/or federal regulators to take action to close such operations down.
There is therefore an important need for a solution to address the problems mentioned above. The present invention addresses these issues and is a novel method to synthesize fuels and chemicals from lower hydrocarbons.